Editing Atlantis (section)

===Utopias and dystopias===

The creation of [[Utopian and dystopian fiction]]s was renewed after the Renaissance, most notably in Francis Bacon's ''[[New Atlantis]]'' (1627), the description of an ideal society that he located off the western coast of America. Thomas Heyrick (1649–1694) followed him with "The New Atlantis" (1687), a satirical poem in three parts. His new continent of uncertain location, perhaps even a floating island either in the sea or the sky, serves as background for his exposure of what he described in a second edition as "A True Character of Popery and Jesuitism".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Heyrick |first1=Thomas |title=The New Atlantis: A Poem, in Three Books |url=http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A43565.0001.001?view=toc|date=1687 |location=London |publisher=Privately printed |via= ''Early English Books Online'', University of Michigan Library Digital Collections |access-date=11 June 2024}}</ref>

The title of ''[[The New Atalantis]]'' by [[Delarivier Manley]] (1709), distinguished from the two others by the single letter, is an equally dystopian work but set this time on a fictional Mediterranean island.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://archive.org/stream/secretmemoirsman00manl#page/n5/mode/2up| title = Secret memoirs and manners of several persons of quality, of both sexes. From the new Atalantis, an island in the Mediteranean|author= Delarivier Manley |author-link= Delarivier Manley | year = 1709}}</ref> In it sexual violence and exploitation is made a metaphor for the hypocritical behaviour of politicians in their dealings with the general public.<ref>Nováková, Soňa, [http://www.phil.muni.cz/angl/thepes/thepes_02_17.pdf pp. 121–6 "Sex and Politics: Delarivier Manley's New Atalantis"]</ref> In Manley's case, the target of satire was the [[Whigs (British political party)|Whig Party]], while in David Maclean Parry's ''[[The Scarlet Empire]]'' (1906) it is [[Socialism]] as practised in foundered Atlantis.<ref>{{cite book| url = http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=dul1.ark:/13960/t3vt2bh65;view=1up;seq=7| title = The scarlet empire / by David M. Parry ; with illustrations by Hermann C. Wall| date = April 2022| publisher = Grosset & Dunlap}}</ref> It was followed in Russia by [[Velimir Khlebnikov]]'s poem ''The Fall of Atlantis'' (''Gibel' Atlantidy'', 1912), which is set in a future rationalist dystopia that has discovered the secret of immortality and is so dedicated to progress that it has lost touch with the past. When the high priest of this ideology is tempted by a slave girl into an act of irrationality, he murders her and precipitates a second flood, above which her severed head floats vengefully among the stars.<ref>Boris Thomson, ''Lot's Wife and the Venus of Milo: Conflicting Attitudes to the Cultural Heritage in Modern Russia'', Cambridge University 1978, [https://books.google.com/books?id=y3UTbrInnAoC&pg=PA77 pp. 77–8]</ref>

A slightly later work, ''The Ancient of Atlantis'' (Boston, 1915) by Albert Armstrong Manship, expounds the Atlantean wisdom that is to redeem the earth. Its three parts consist of a verse narrative of the life and training of an Atlantean wise one, followed by his Utopian moral teachings and then a psychic drama set in modern times in which a reincarnated child embodying the lost wisdom is reborn on earth.<ref>Manship, Albert Armstrong. ''[https://archive.org/stream/ancientatlantis00mansgoog#page/n15/mode/2up The ancient of Atlantis, an epic poem]'' Sherman, French & Co. 1915.</ref>

In [[Hispanic]] eyes, Atlantis had a more intimate interpretation. The land had been a colonial power which, although it had brought civilization to ancient Europe, had also enslaved its peoples. Its tyrannical fall from grace had contributed to the fate that had overtaken it, but now its disappearance had unbalanced the world. This was the point of view of [[Jacint Verdaguer]]'s vast mythological epic ''L'Atlantida'' (1877). After the sinking of the former continent, Hercules travels east across the Atlantic to found the city of [[Barcelona]] and then departs westward again to the [[Hesperides]]. The story is told by a hermit to a shipwrecked mariner, who is inspired to follow in his tracks and so "call the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old". This mariner, of course, was [[Christopher Columbus]].<ref>Robert Hughes, ''Barcelona'', London 1992, [https://books.google.com/books?id=HJd9esHdz5YC&q=Atlantida+%22poem%22&pg=PA341 pp. 341–3]</ref>

Verdaguer's poem was written in [[Catalan language|Catalan]], but was widely translated in both Europe and Hispano-America.<ref>Isidor Cònsul, [https://web.archive.org/web/20160207001536/http://www.visat.cat/traduccions-literatura-catalana/eng/ressenyes/85/122/0/3/poesia/jacint-verdaguer.html "The translations of Verdaguer"]. Visat.</ref> One response was the similarly entitled Argentinian ''Atlantida'' of [[Olegario Víctor Andrade]] (1881), which sees in "Enchanted Atlantis that Plato foresaw, a golden promise to the fruitful race" of Latins.<ref>''Obras Poeticas'', [https://archive.org/stream/3202277#page/151/mode/2up/search/atlantida pp. 151–166]; there is a translation of canto 8 by [http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/atl%E2%94%9C%C3%ADntida Elijah Clarence Hills]</ref> The bad example of the colonising world remains, however. [[José Juan Tablada]] characterises its threat in his "De Atlántida" (1894) through the beguiling picture of the lost world populated by the underwater creatures of Classical myth, among whom is the [[Siren (mythology)|Siren]] of its final stanza with

{{poemquote|
her eye on the keel of the wandering vessel 
that in passing deflowers the sea's smooth mirror,
launching into the night her amorous warbling
and the dulcet lullaby of her treacherous voice!<ref>''Los Trovadores de México'' (Barcelona, 1898), [https://books.google.com/books?id=1MwpAAAAYAAJ&dq=Tablada+%22De+Atl%C3%A1ntida%22&pg=PA413 pp.383-4]</ref>
}}

There is a similar ambivalence in [[Janus Djurhuus]]' six-stanza "Atlantis" (1917), where a celebration of the [[Faroese language conflict|Faroese linguistic revival]] grants it an ancient pedigree by linking Greek to Norse legend. In the poem a female figure rising from the sea against a background of Classical palaces is recognised as a priestess of Atlantis. The poet recalls "that the Faroes lie there in the north Atlantic Ocean/ where before lay the poet-dreamt lands," but also that in Norse belief, such a figure only appears to those about to drown.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Joensen |first=Leyvoy |title=Atlantis, Bábylon, Tórshavn: The Djurhuus Brothers and William Heinesen in Faroese Literary History |journal=Scandinavian Studies |volume=74 |issue=2 |year=2002 |jstor=40920372 |pages=181–204 [esp. 192–4] }}</ref>